Not all gladiators were brought to the arena in chains. While most early combatants were conquered peoples and slaves who had committed crimes, grave inscriptions show that by the 1st century A.

Lured by the thrill of battle and the roar of the crowds, scores of free men began voluntarily signing contracts with gladiator schools in the hope of winning glory and prize money.

These freelance warriors were often desperate men or ex-soldiers skilled in fighting, but some were upper-class patricians, knights and even senators eager to demonstrate their warrior pedigree.

Many ancient chroniclers described the Roman games as an import from the Etruscans, but most historians now argue that gladiator fights got their start as a blood rite staged at the funerals of wealthy nobles.

When distinguished aristocrats died, their families would hold graveside bouts between slaves or condemned prisoners as a kind of macabre eulogy for the virtues the person had demonstrated in life.

The funeral games later increased in scope during the reign of Julius Caesar, who staged bouts between hundreds of gladiators in honor of his deceased father and daughter.

The spectacles proved hugely popular, and by the end of the 1st century B. Hollywood movies and television shows often depict gladiatorial bouts as a bloody free-for-all, but most fights operated under fairly strict rules and regulations.

Contests were typically single combat between two men of similar size and experience. Referees oversaw the action, and probably stopped the fight as soon as one of the participants was seriously wounded.

A match could even end in a stalemate if the crowd became bored by a long and drawn out battle, and in rare cases, both warriors were allowed to leave the arena with honor if they had put on an exciting show for the crowd.

Since gladiators were expensive to house, feed and train, their promoters were loath to see them needlessly killed. Trainers may have taught their fighters to wound, not kill, and the combatants may have taken it upon themselves to avoid seriously hurting their brothers-in-arms.

Nevertheless, the life of a gladiator was usually brutal and short. Most only lived to their mids, and historians have estimated that somewhere between one in five or one in 10 bouts left one of its participants dead.

If a gladiator was seriously wounded or threw down his weapon in defeat, his fate was left in the hands of the spectators. In contests held at the Colosseum, the emperor had the final say in whether the felled warrior lived or died, but rulers and fight organizers often let the people make the decision.

Some historians think the sign for death may have actually been the thumbs up, while a closed fist with two fingers extended, a thumbs down, or even a waved handkerchief might have signaled mercy.

By the time the Colosseum opened in 80 A. Fighters were placed in classes based on their record, skill level and experience, and most specialized in a particular fighting style and set of weaponry.

These warriors tried to ensnare their opponents with their net before moving in for the kill, but if they failed, they were left almost entirely defenseless.

The Colosseum and other Roman arenas are often associated with gruesome animal hunts, but it was uncommon for the gladiators to be involved.

Nine thousand animals were slain during a day ceremony to mark the opening of the Colosseum, and another 11, were later killed as part of a day festival held by the Emperor Trajan in the 2nd century A.

While most animals were merely slaughtered for sport, others were trained to do tricks or even pitted against one another in fights.

Petitions could be submitted to the editor as magistrate in full view of the community. Factiones and claques could vent their spleen on each other, and occasionally on Emperors.

The amphitheatre munus thus served the Roman community as living theatre and a court in miniature, in which judgement could be served not only on those in the arena below, but on their judges.

Their seating was "disorderly and indiscriminate" until Augustus prescribed its arrangement in his Social Reforms. To persuade the Senate, he expressed his distress on behalf of a Senator who could not find seating at a crowded games in Puteoli:.

In consequence of this the senate decreed that, whenever any public show was given anywhere, the first row of seats should be reserved for senators; and at Rome he would not allow the envoys of the free and allied nations to sit in the orchestra, since he was informed that even freedmen were sometimes appointed.

He separated the soldiery from the people. He assigned special seats to the married men of the commons, to boys under age their own section and the adjoining one to their preceptors; and he decreed that no one wearing a dark cloak should sit in the middle of the house.

He would not allow women to view even the gladiators except from the upper seats, though it had been the custom for men and women to sit together at such shows.

These arrangements do not seem to have been strongly enforced. Popular factions supported favourite gladiators and gladiator types.

The secutor was equipped with a long, heavy "large" shield called a scutum ; Secutores , their supporters and any heavyweight secutor -based types such as the Murmillo were secutarii.

Titus and Trajan preferred the parmularii and Domitian the secutarii ; Marcus Aurelius took neither side. Nero seems to have enjoyed the brawls between rowdy, enthusiastic and sometimes violent factions, but called in the troops if they went too far.

There were also local rivalries. Many were killed or wounded. Nero banned gladiator munera though not the games at Pompeii for ten years as punishment.

A man who knows how to conquer in war is a man who knows how to arrange a banquet and put on a show. Rome was essentially a landowning military aristocracy.

It applied from highest to lowest alike in the chain of command. In the aftermath of Cannae, Scipio Africanus crucified Roman deserters and had non-Roman deserters thrown to the beasts.

In obedience to the Books of Destiny, some strange and unusual sacrifices were made, human sacrifices amongst them. They were lowered into a stone vault, which had on a previous occasion also been polluted by human victims, a practice most repulsive to Roman feelings.

When the gods were believed to be duly propitiated Armour, weapons, and other things of the kind were ordered to be in readiness, and the ancient spoils gathered from the enemy were taken down from the temples and colonnades.

The dearth of freemen necessitated a new kind of enlistment; 8, sturdy youths from amongst the slaves were armed at the public cost, after they had each been asked whether they were willing to serve or no.

These soldiers were preferred, as there would be an opportunity of ransoming them when taken prisoners at a lower price.

While the Senate mustered their willing slaves, Hannibal offered his dishonoured Roman captives a chance for honourable death, in what Livy describes as something very like the Roman munus.

Two years later, following its defeat at Arausio:. Rutilius, consul with C. For he, following the example of no previous general, with teachers summoned from the gladiatorial training school of C.

The military were great aficionados of the games, and supervised the schools. Many schools and amphitheatres were sited at or near military barracks, and some provincial army units owned gladiator troupes.

It would rise to twenty, and later, to twenty five years. Roman military discipline was ferocious; severe enough to provoke mutiny, despite the consequences.

A career as a volunteer gladiator may have seemed an attractive option for some. They had served their late master with exemplary loyalty but thereafter, they disappear from the record.

Roman writing as a whole demonstrates a deep ambivalence towards the gladiatoria munera. Even the most complex and sophisticated munera of the Imperial era evoked the ancient, ancestral dii manes of the underworld and were framed by the protective, lawful rites of sacrificium.

Their popularity made their co-option by the state inevitable; Cicero acknowledged their sponsorship as a political imperative. And suppose a gladiator has been brought to the ground, when do you ever see one twist his neck away after he has been ordered to extend it for the death blow?

Thus demoralised was Capua. The munus itself could be interpreted as pious necessity, but its increasing luxury corroded Roman virtue, and created an un-Roman appetite for profligacy and self-indulgence.

Having "neither hope nor illusions", the gladiator could transcend his own debased nature, and disempower death itself by meeting it face to face.

Courage, dignity, altruism and loyalty were morally redemptive; Lucian idealised this principle in his story of Sisinnes, who voluntarily fought as a gladiator, earned 10, drachmas and used it to buy freedom for his friend, Toxaris.

There remained the thrilling possibility of clandestine sexual transgression by high-caste spectators and their heroes of the arena.

Such assignations were a source for gossip and satire but some became unforgivably public: What was the youthful charm that so fired Eppia?

Her poppet, her Sergius, was no chicken, with a dud arm that prompted hope of early retirement. Besides his face looked a proper mess, helmet-scarred, a great wart on his nose, an unpleasant discharge always trickling from one eye.

But he was a gladiator. That word makes the whole breed seem handsome, and made her prefer him to her children and country, her sister, her husband.

Steel is what they fall in love with. Most gladiators would have aimed lower. On the one and the same account they glorify them and they degrade and diminish them; yes, further, they openly condemn them to disgrace and civil degradation; they keep them religiously excluded from council chamber, rostrum, senate, knighthood, and every other kind of office and a good many distinctions.

The perversity of it! They love whom they lower; they despise whom they approve; the art they glorify, the artist they disgrace. In this new Play, I attempted to follow the old custom of mine, of making a fresh trial; I brought it on again.

In the first Act I pleased; when in the meantime a rumor spread that gladiators were about to be exhibited; the populace flock together, make a tumult, clamor aloud, and fight for their places: Images of gladiators could be found throughout the Republic and Empire, among all classes.

Mosaics dating from the 2nd through 4th centuries AD have been invaluable in the reconstruction of combat and its rules, gladiator types and the development of the munus.

Earlier periods provide only occasional, perhaps exceptional examples. Souvenir ceramics were produced depicting named gladiators in combat; similar images of higher quality, were available on more expensive articles in high quality ceramic, glass or silver.

Pliny the Elder gives vivid examples of the popularity of gladiator portraiture in Antium and an artistic treat laid on by an adoptive aristocrat for the solidly plebeian citizens of the Roman Aventine:.

When a freedman of Nero was giving a gladiatorial show at Antium , the public porticoes were covered with paintings, so we are told, containing life-like portraits of all the gladiators and assistants.

This portraiture of gladiators has been the highest interest in art for many centuries now, but it was Gaius Terentius who began the practice of having pictures made of gladiatorial shows and exhibited in public; in honour of his grandfather who had adopted him he provided thirty pairs of Gladiators in the Forum for three consecutive days, and exhibited a picture of the matches in the Grove of Diana.

The decline of the munus was a far from straightforward process. Still, emperors continued to subsidize the games as a matter of undiminished public interest.

Ten years later, he banned the gladiator munera:. In times in which peace and peace relating to domestic affairs prevail bloody demonstrations displease us.

Therefore, we order that there may be no more gladiator combats. Those who were condemned to become gladiators for their crimes are to work from now on in the mines.

Thus they pay for their crimes without having to pour their blood. An imperially sanctioned munus at some time in the s suggests that yet again, imperial legislation failed to entirely curb the games, not least when Constantine defied his own law.

In , Theodosius I r. In the Byzantine Empire, theatrical shows and chariot races continued to attract the crowds, and drew a generous Imperial subsidy.

It is not known how many gladiatoria munera were given throughout the Roman period. Many, if not most, involved venationes , and in the later Empire some may have been only that.

In the early Imperial era, munera in Pompeii and neighbouring towns were dispersed from March through November. Of days reserved for spectacles of various kinds, were for theatrical shows, 64 for chariot races and just 10 in December for gladiator games and venationes.

A century before this, the emperor Alexander Severus r. Some Roman reenactors attempt to recreate Roman gladiator troupes.

Some of these groups are part of larger Roman reenactment groups, and others are wholly independent, though they might participate in larger demonstrations of Roman reenacting or historical reenacting in general.

These groups usually focus on portraying mock gladiatorial combat in as accurate a manner as possible. Gladiator fights have been depicted in a number of peplum films also known as "sword-and-sandal" movies.

This is a genre of largely Italian-made historical epics costume dramas that dominated the Italian film industry from to They can be immediately differentiated from the competing Hollywood product by their use of dubbing.

The pepla attempted to emulate the big-budget Hollywood historical epics of the time, such as Spartacus. Inspired by the success of Spartacus , there were a number of Italian peplums that emphasized the gladiatorial arena fights in their plots, with it becoming almost a peplum subgenre in itself; One group of supermen known as "The Ten Gladiators" appeared in a trilogy, all three films starring Dan Vadis in the lead role.

Grier and Markov portray female gladiators in ancient Rome, who have been enslaved and must fight for their freedom. Crowe portrays a fictional Roman general who is reduced to slavery and then rises through the ranks of the gladiatorial arena to avenge the murder of his family.

Amazons and Gladiators is a drama action adventure film directed and written by Zachary Weintraub starring Patrick Bergin and Jennifer Rubin.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. For other uses, see Gladiator disambiguation. List of Roman gladiator types. List of Roman amphitheatres.

Gladiator show fight in Trier in Carnuntum , Austria, This section does not cite any sources. Please help improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources.

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Evidence of "Samnite" as an insult in earlier writings fades as Samnium is absorbed into the Republic. Welch is citing Livy, The Aemilii Lepidii were one of the most important families in Rome at the time, and probably owned a gladiator school ludus.

Wiedemann is citing Valerius Maximus, 2. Gladiator gangs were used by Caesar and others to overawe and "persuade".

Gladiators could be enrolled to serve noble households; some household slaves may have been raised and trained for this. Antiochus IV Epiphanes of Greece was keen to upstage his Roman allies, but gladiators were becoming increasingly expensive, and to save costs, all his were local volunteers.

Commodus , 73 Epitome. Commodus was assassinated and posthumously declared a public enemy but was later deified. Heroes of the Roman Amphitheatre".

Retrieved 21 April Moral Essays , B fully cited in Futrell , pp. Gladiatorial banquet on mosaic, El Djem. See pompa circensis for the similar procession before games were held in the circus.

In the Eastern provinces of the later Empire the state archiereis combined the roles of editor , Imperial cult priest and lanista , giving gladiatoria munera in which the use of sharp weapons seems an exceptional honour.

Violence and Spectacle in Ancient Rome , Routledge, , pp. The Lure of the Arena: Social Psychology and the Crowd at the Roman Games.

Liber de Spectaculis , Kyle is citing Robert. This is evidenced on a roughly inscribed libellus. Lives , "Caligula", Marks on the bones of several gladiators suggest a sword thrust into the base of the throat and down towards the heart.

See Kyle , pp. Lives , "Tiberius", Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies. The single name form on a gladiator memorial usually indicates a slave, two a freedman or discharged auctoratus and, very rare among gladiators, three " tria nomina " a freedman or a full Roman citizen.

Futrell is citing Digest , 3. This had probably began under Augustus. Facial stigmata represented extreme social degradation. The burning alive of a soldier who refused to become an auctoratus at a Spanish school in 43 BC is exceptional only because he was a citizen, technically exempt from such compulsion and penalty.

AD - Implications for Differences in Diet". How did the gladiators really live? Archived from the original on 29 April Retrieved 24 March Manumission was seldom absolute.

Terms of release were negotiated between master and slave; Digests A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities. Barton is citing Cassius Dio, Futrell is citing Cassius Dio, Barton is citing Juvenal, 8.

The American Journal of Philology. Caius Gracchus , The provision of permanent seating was thought a particularly objectionable luxury. Welch is citing CIL , X.

Potter and Mattingly are citing Pliny the Elder, The amphitheatre was commissioned by T. According to Pliny, its three storeys were marble-clad, housed 3, bronze statues and seated 80, spectators.

It was probably wooden-framed in part. Scenes of the Arena on Roman Domestic Mosaics", pp. Even emperors who disliked munera were thus obliged to attend them.

Lives , "Augustus", It was notably fulfilled and celebrated in the battlefield devotio of two consular Decii ; firstly by the father and later by his son.

Mattern is citing Cassius Dio, 72, Tusculan Disputations , 2. See Bagnani , p. Tacitus, in Annals This should be considered scandalous and noteworthy, rather than common.

Natural History , De Spectaculis , Compared to "pagan" noxii , Christian deaths in the arena would have been few. Retrieved 9 November New York, New York: Bagnani, Gilbert January The Sorrows of the Ancient Romans: The Gladiator and the Monster.